Popular or 'dime novelist' Charlotte Mary Brame was a prolific author—estimates of the number of novels she produced range from thirty to two hundred or more—in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. Her score is hard to count because some of her various pseudonyms were much used by others besides herself, and some of her novels appeared in story papers but never in volume form. She began as a short-story writer. Typically set in English aristocratic settings, her books regularly valorize nobility and excuse questionable behaviour in the name of honour. Her heroines in their romantic troubles are often described as caged wild birds or frail or broken flowers.

Before September 1877 CMB's novel Dora Thorne deplored, among other sins, parental neglect of daughters. It proved one of her most popular titles, usually published under her pseudonym 'Bertha M. Clay'.